Taurus 10° (April 30)

 

And so the last day of the fourth month of the year now ends. Maybe Marthe Svenjördt should be Marthe Svenjørd instead. Was thinking of making it Trip’s drag name. I have lots of thoughts and feels circling my head and viscera. Speaking of Trip I accidentally friended Rufus as Trip yesterday and then had to write him to say “no!” friend me as Quinn. I realize I have some re-writing to do of headlines and want to transcend all the nastiness of the past. Changing the world one creep at a time. I’m going to just make myself visible and available. I’m just going to act as if there are no problems. I’ve called out those I need to call out and I have nothing left to say. What I need do is count my allies and turn as many of the world’s so called enemies into friends. I just don’t want any more agita from any corner at this point. There is so much fun and beauty to be had. So it’s happening a little later in life. I’ll just have to live longer. And to do so means changing some ways and means. Poor John Singleton. High blood pressure is a killer and I for one am keeping a more keen eye on it as I get older. There is no reason to be stressed. It is all an illusion. What needs to happen is the getting out of the way of natural health. We have such an opportunity to get a great many ideas into works now and so it’s time for a major Prince Hal moment. Today is the last day of April so I can hopefully switch gears without grinding them too too hard. I’m actually grateful for a cloudy day. It is rather gloomy though and still so very cold, which I guess isn’t weird considering where I live. I don’t have a client until 2PM and I want that to constitute the end of the day for the most part. We have a tithing we are doing too.

 

Anyway on the docket today is creating a to-do list for finishing out the NEFA grant for the year. Here are some notes:

 

The planning process mainly fell to Brian King (and Nathan Cohen) and Quinn Cox, the director of 333 Inc/Afterglow Festival/Glow Festival (and 33 board of directors who helped with various functions, from participating in meetings with venues and artists, accounting and other tasks and functions). It was the artist, Brian King, who approached us to apply for the grant. Originally there was a consult on board to handle much of the work at the outset. However this individual dropped out before the grant was even awarded. The artist didn’t have a full understanding of the function of the grant—specifically, that most organizations in our position  as grantees are brick and mortar, while we are not, and therefore needed a hosting partner for the actual tour; nor that actual NEFA tours were partnerships with a minimum 3 partners all of whom would be spending money to be receive a NEFA tour grant. That said, we participated in the Idea Swap and followed up not only with organziations that expressed interest but we also outreached to every single venue participant in the data base. Sadly, of all the venues we reached out to and followed up with, only one returned our correspondence. We had meanwhile expanded our outreach to non-NEFA participants like Mass MoCA and other prominent arts centers, museums, theater companies, universities, etc. including the Museum School/ MFA, Portland Stage, Trinity Repertory, Provincetown Theater Company, Yale Repertory and the Vermont Artists Exchange, Bennington College, Endicott College, creating an expansive data base of venues of our own, a number of which we visited and dropped information in person. We produced a showcase at Endicott Collegein the autumn and invited every venue in the data base, including all venues on the Idea Swap list. We currently have interest from Nancy Bauer at the Museum School, Sue Killiam at Mass MoCA, having had comprehensive meetings/talks with both, and more albeit vague interest from other venues. The subject matter of Gravitational Fool is such that it appeals most to venues that have a solid LGBTQ audience and community for conducting ancillary workshiops and educational programs to go with the piece. With the Endicott showcase, the artists also conducted daytime workshops and programs for students, as we wanted to exercise this component and hone some ideas on that score for tour purposes.

 

As mentioned previously, the artist (Brian King) who approached us to apply for the Tour Planning grant was unaware that the subsequent NEFA Touring grant required partnerships between (333 Inc.) as the primary presenter and at least three (to seven) partnering venues, each of which would have to budget for and invest in the piece and then be supported by NEFA touring grant. We (specifically Artistic Direct Quinn Cox) was made aware of this in his process working with Adrienne Petrillo at NEFA; so our planning approach changed tack a few times. First we cast a wide net of our own, working under the assumption that if we had three commitments minimum we could apply for the next grant in the next cycle. Once it was made clear that we had to be a presenter, and not having brick and mortar, and that we needed three partners minimum to apply for their own grants to support the piece, we sought to partner with a hosting venue (Museum School, Provincetown Theater, Wellfleet Harbor Actor’s Theater) and to secure three partners as directed by the NEFA requirements for the following grant. We expected some interest from the Idea Swap but received none. And we were rather shocked by the fact that all but one of the venues we reached out to had the courtesy to even acknowledge our emails or return our phone calls. Pretty shocking actually. We were thrilled to secure a showcase with Endicott and to have the opportunity to promote to press, venues, regional audience and so forth. Having previously produced the piece in two different settings (night club in Provincetown and black box at A.R.T), we were able to adapt the piece for a tradition proceneum theater which we felt would make the piece more portable and accessible to traditional venues of the sort. And, again, we go to exercise our muscles with student programs, workshops and talks about the piece and what goes into making a work like this. So, planning wise, we actually managed to do more than expected and the title, artists and timeline remained the same. We stuck to our projected budget, making adjustments between what we requested and what we received, and feel we made great inroads in the development of the work and the various ways that it can be presented. It is a wonderful piece and is always enthusiastically received by audiences, students and communites.

 

To view the original Sabian Symbol themed 2015 Cosmic Blague corresponding to this day: Flashback! The degree pointof the Sabian Symbol will be one degree higher than the one listed for today. The Blague portrays the starting degree of for this day ( 0°,  for instance), as I typically post in the morning, while the Sabian number corresponds to the end point (1°) of that same 0°-1° period. There are 360  degrees spread over 365 or 6 days per year—so they near but not exactly correlate.

 

Typos happen. I don’t have a proofreader. And I like to just write, post and go!
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